The Anything Goes Girl (A Brenda Contay Novel Of Suspense Book 1)

by Barry Knister

  “What’s this ‘we’?” he asked. “I’m on loan. You wanted me here to watch Contay. I did that. Tomorrow, I’m going to Seattle.”

  McIntosh was holding herself, shaking her head, not understanding.

  “It’s not in the job description,” Lindbergh said. “It was, when you asked Bernie Slatkin for someone last month. Someone to check out Soublik’s friends and shut them down. Collect letters. This is different. I’m out of the business, but I know people. So, if you want, I’ll make some calls.”

  McIntosh stared at him. “You’re saying you won’t do it,” she said. “You’re telling me you’ve got scruples now, you’re—”

  “I’m telling you I have contacts from before,” Lindbergh said. “I’m out of the business, but I know who to call. You decide what you want.”

  After a moment, her shoulders relaxed. She looked from him to the big window, turning an expensive ring with her thumb, studying her own reflection. Growing thoughtful, her face gradually lost its hard edges. She had washed off her makeup, mascara smeared under one eye. She had a very good body, but she was no one he would want to fuck more than once. Once would be enough.

  “How would you do it?”

  “What, Contay? Hard to say. They’re all different.”

  “Don’t play with me, tell me. You know. That’s in your job description, giving advice, consulting. I’m consulting you.”

  He remembered a phrase from Contay’s interview in the Hawaii airport lounge—many bricks short of a load. McIntosh was still looking out the window, fiddling with the ring, waiting for an answer.

  He popped in more peanuts. Off Contay now, and it would all blow up, but McIntosh was past seeing it. Even so, there was a kind of logic to it, the two of them duking it out, right here in the Rust Belt. He remembered Contay asleep, throwing up, sitting on the couch as he asked why she was still pushing. Now he knew. He liked her—gutsy, looking right at him, not running. If McIntosh brought it off, she would not forget he had refused her.

  “The night guard sleeps in the lobby,” he said. “There’s a good deadbolt upstairs, so you need a key.”

  “I have a key.”

  “Yeah? I’d wait a couple hours. Let her sleep.”

  “Go on.”

  “Don’t take anything with you,” he said. “Park on the street and walk around to the back. Use the service entrance. They don’t lock it because the guard can see anyone coming in. If it’s locked, you hope he’s sleeping and enter from the front. Use the stairs. If he’s awake, you have to make him leave. I rigged the wiring on the car alarm to go off when you reset the clock five minutes earlier. He would probably go out for that. Don’t do it unless you have to. If you get upstairs, work with what you find and don’t leave prints. Don’t introduce anything into the environment you don’t have to.”

  She nodded, staring at herself in the glass, taking it in.

  “When you leave, use the stairs. The guards change shift at eleven. If he’s asleep, you just leave. If he’s watching TV, you do an oh-golly-I-just-dropped-my-key-on-the-stairs, and ask him to help you. He’s looking, you find it in your purse, you say thank you and leave.”

  Lindbergh saw she was going to do it. She believed all this Marines shit.

  “What then? After I leave?”

  “If you exit clean, drive back here. But no valet parking, park it yourself. Don’t go to the desk, go right up to your room. Then call Poole’s house. Get him up in the middle of the night. Tell him Contay’s not answering her phone, she must be at his house, you have to talk to her. It’s a little funny, but he saw you earlier today, it sort of fits. If you run into something else, you make it up.”

  She turned abruptly and went out. Thirsty from the peanuts, Lindbergh finished what was left of his champagne before getting up. Contay’s high rise was an easy building, and McIntosh had a key. The guards played solitaire, read, or napped at the desk. She might pull it off. She was smart and didn’t give a shit anymore.

  He heard paper being ripped and wadded up. Lindbergh crossed to the open bedroom door and watched her tearing legal sheets, balling them up, stuffing them into a wastebasket.

  “Leave.”

  She didn’t look up, tearing more paper at the dining table. Lindbergh passed behind her, glanced at the TV and saw it was off. He had made sure to lease the car in her name, and was already packed.

  “Brenda, hello. This is Devin Scillian, WDIV. First, welcome back. What an amazing experience. Listen, we have your contract and two tapes. This is really interesting material. All of us watched your special after our broadcast. ‘Heavy Weather’ made no mention of the story you gave us. Please give us a call, and thanks.”

  “Hello, Brenda. This is Grace Soublik. I thought you might like to know. We had three sets. We watched 2, 4, and 7. None of the stations said anything or showed your tapes. But the phone’s been ringing since ten-thirty. We’ve had calls from the stations, from the Free Press and the News. When you can, please call.”

  “Brenda, my God, what is this? I give you everything, I bump the hottest thing since sliced bread and you stab me in the back. Atlanta called—”

  She pushed STOP and got her glass before easing carefully onto the couch. Back upstairs, she had poured herself two fingers of vodka, her first drink in four weeks. Then she had run her VCR’s tape of the Channel 4 news. Arson in a downriver warehouse, urban renewal linked to casino gambling, a planned teachers’ strike in Livonia. By Weather and Sports, she had known 4 would not break the story tonight.

  It doesn’t matter, she thought, looking at Scillian’s co-anchor freeze-framed on the set. They will tomorrow. She got the remote and pointed. “—it for all of us. Stay tuned for Jay Leno and the Tonight Show.”

  Leno’s theme music started. Brenda turned it off and sat a moment in the dark, savoring her drink. Whatever was coming, tomorrow would be hectic, draining. McIntosh and Jerry had probably ordered room service.

  Feeling the drink, she shuffled into the bathroom and hung up the hooker robe. Her back hurt as she sat on the toilet. When she stood to flush, the water was pink. The kidney. That could wait, too. She snapped out the light and felt her way along the hall into the dark bedroom. She slipped out of her slacks and blouse, and lowered herself onto the bed. It was less painful on her back.

  The room smelled of cedar. With the scent came her father’s presence, easing her toward sleep.

  Again she saw him on the beach in Cape Cod, with a paper plate of boiled shrimp and a Bud. Morris was there, only ten, watching the portable TV he had received for good grades. She was surfcasting with both hands—drawing back the rod, following her father’s instructions. A happy moment, good times. She wanted to believe they might make things better, she and Morris. She owed him.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  The thought carried into sleep. Dreams of her family mingled with images of islanders and gravesites, bell-like rhythms. Ehrlich paddling a canoe. With them was the lap of waves over her feet as she threw casts for bluefish. She seemed to tangle the line around her hands, then heard gulls crying—a tearing rasp.

  Someone had grabbed her hair—McIntosh, her perfume. She yanked Brenda up and wound tape behind her head and back, over her mouth. Something encumbered her feet—the bed’s comforter.

  Kicking to get free, the woman on top of her, she grabbed McIntosh’s wrists but lost hold, her own hands already tied. She struggled as McIntosh jumped free and quickly bound her feet, ankle to ankle with duct tape, then moved to strap Brenda’s arms and hands against her belly. She tied her tight at the back with something that gave. Pantyhose. McIntosh tore off Brenda’s sport bra, then yanked her panties down to her bound ankles. More than the pain in her back, being naked in the dark scared her.

  Feet padded and the overhead light came on. McIntosh was at the bedroom door, looking at her watch. She was dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, head wrapped in a scarf. She disappeared down the hall. Seconds later, sounds came from the front room—cellophane being t
orn, metal on metal, a squeak.

  Bridging with shoulders and feet, Brenda began painfully edging to the side of the bed, but McIntosh was back, pushing the wheelchair into the room. With it she had the I.V. pole on casters, the bottle swinging.

  She brought both chair and pole to the side of the bed. Brenda’s shoulder bag was hooked over the chair’s backrest. From the bag, McIntosh pulled out the plastic tubing and a needle. She fitted needle to tube, unhooked the I.V. bottle, held it to the light and worked off the stopper. She was wearing Brenda’s kitchen rubber gloves. McIntosh worked the tube into the stopper and hung the bottle back on the stand. All her movements were precise and focused.

  “Nanny training,” she said. “Night school in Glasgow for girls applying to the au pair placement bureau. CPR, Heimlich maneuver. How to find a vein. I never had to, but they show you how to do a tracheotomy with a pen knife.”

  She finished and rolled the I.V. pole aside before positioning the wheelchair next to the bed. “At first, I thought you died in front of your TV, but that’s not very convincing. Not for someone your age. On the other hand, people who drink or shoot up die all the time in hot tubs, swimming pools. Even all-state swimmers can drown.”

  McIntosh grabbed her by the hair and pulled, but Brenda jerked away, yanking the woman down onto the bed. She fought for something to grab, and then a terrible pain, the special agony of a bruise being struck flashed in all directions from her lower back. McIntosh struck again and the room blurred.

  Crippled, she felt herself being dragged by her hair and the cinched nylon off the bed, into the wheelchair. With belts from the closet, McIntosh strapped Brenda to the frame, one arm pinned to her side, one cinched wrist up on the chair’s armrest. Drawing more pantyhose from her hip pocket, she knelt and tied Brenda’s bound feet to the chair’s frame. In those seconds, the terrible back pain flattened out to a steady misery.

  Done, McIntosh stood. She stepped back to study her work, and nodded.

  “Quite honestly, I wasn’t sure what to do until I got here,” she said. “I saw the bottle of vodka in your kitchen. It’s pretty much catch as catch can at this point. Taking Moser’s tape to the station was smart. You knew I’d come after you, and what I’d think. It never occurred to me you’d throw this story away. That’s genuinely upsetting.”

  She knelt next to the chair, slapped and pressed Brenda’s forearm, then nodded. She ran the needle into the vein and tapped it.

  “The vodka,” she said. “With Demerol. You were just going to overdose, but this will make more sense. They’ll find the needle mark in the autopsy. And the bruise on your back. The Demerol will fit. It’s amazing what you can buy from a hotel barkeep.”

  McIntosh took a spool of adhesive tape from her pocket. She tore off two strips, and secured the needle and tube to Brenda’s forearm. Reaching to the I.V. bottle, she twisted the drip, opened it further, and checked her watch.

  “Ten minutes, give or take. I waited for the guard to go to the gents before letting myself in downstairs. It’s two a.m., but someone might show up. Either way, you won’t confirm what’s on those tapes. People know you, this will not be inconsistent. I’ve made mistakes, that’s how I learned. But I’ve never failed. I simply can’t imagine it. I suppose that’s a flaw. Everyone does eventually, but not with this. No, what will not happen is you and Moser validating each other’s stories. He may convince the Pirimese to help him, but that takes time. It gets murky. Contracts subject to interpretation. Without you, he’s essentially on his own.”

  McIntosh watched the bottle for more than a minute, turned away, then seemed to think of something. She moved the I.V. pole several feet from the chair, reached down and levered the wheel locks in place.

  She straightened. “Your file, my file,” she said. “We had each other’s, but I read yours wrong. Bad girl from Larchmont goes to college to get away from Mom. Anything goes, poor grades, your cowgirl persona on television. No, I didn’t understand you. I thought you survived at sea because of luck, but that’s not so, is it? You survived for the same reason I would. You hate to lose.”

  She left the room. Brenda tried to twist her arm, but couldn’t. Any effort to shift her weight brought agony. The chair remained locked. She heard a series of clicks—the answering machine.

  “Brenda, hello. This is Devin Scillian, WDIV. First, welcome back. What—”

  The volume dropped now, the machine still running but not audible to her. McIntosh was listening to the messages.

  For no reason the idea filled her with rage. She moved in the chair, rocking the locked wheels. Something about McIntosh learning what was on the machine made her crazy. She was listening, plotting, with Brenda trussed up in her own bedroom—

  She had it going. Each jolt hit like a fist in her back, but each one brought her closer to tipping over—a noise that might wake the tenants next door or under her unit. The thought and the pain of every movement gave her strength, purpose.

  The chair was just going over when McIntosh ran in and braced against it. Gently, she righted the chair as Brenda went on throwing herself right and left, enraged.

  McIntosh knelt in front of her. Brenda wouldn’t look, kept trying to rock. Again, as she had in the parking lot, McIntosh jerked Brenda’s face up by the chin. It was like a reward. Either the rocking or what she had heard in the front room had turned McIntosh’s face the special blotched red of that morning.

  “I don’t want you blemished,” she said calmly, but she was not calm. All Brenda had were her eyes, and she winked.

  Jaw working, McIntosh took a breath and let it out. “This chair’s backrest is just vinyl,” she said. “If you go on—” She pulled out the empty vodka bottle from the shoulder bag and held it up. “Think about this struck as often as necessary on your back, on the left kidney.”

  Looking into eyes level with her own, Brenda felt the bottle tap against her shinbone.

  She stopped moving, the tapping clear and awful. But still, a small victory. McIntosh might break windows and use tire irons, but she would think of such moments as only short quotes from the humiliating past. Her own script placed her in glass-curtained office towers, devising strategy, a comer.

  She blinked and stood. Veneered and polished in a new country, connected now for better things, Betsy McIntosh had shown them both that she was still her old self—a soccer bitch from Glasgow.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  Fifteen minutes later, she pulled out the I.V. needle and unlocked the wheels.

  The woman’s movements now seemed fluid, dreamy. Brenda watched hands in yellow gloves disassemble the I.V. pole and felt her head loll as she was shoved from behind.

  Pushed down the hall, she wondered vaguely about the guard sleeping at his desk or watching cable shows. McIntosh stopped the chair and went into the bathroom, turned on the water and then wheeled the chair to a stop in the living room. Detached, mildly interested, Brenda understood why she was nude. She had broken with her station, sent out her contract and tapes. Then she shot up a painkiller, drank alone, took a hot bath….

  Except the Demerol wasn’t touching her pain. Use it, she thought. Stay awake. The vodka had slowed what was happening, and Brenda felt less scared. The sliding glass door was open, and a breeze touched her naked body.

  McIntosh was in the kitchen. The refrigerator door closed and seconds later she stepped out with a plate. “Cheese and crackers,” she said. “Why not? This was a big day. Remember your back. There’s no need for pain. I’ve read drowning isn’t the worst way to go.” She stepped onto the patio, chewing.

  In a daze, Brenda watched her dark shape move a patio table, then a chair. “I think you were out here. Good.” McIntosh came back in, stepped around the wheelchair and padded down the hall. The shower curtain was scraped aside, then she was back. “Another couple minutes.”

  She prepared another cracker, and again stepped outside. “This is really the quintessential American landscape,” she said. “High rises, freeways. Know
what a Borstal is? Probably not. I remember mine, I was fourteen. Terrible food, boring people.”

  Silhouetted against the night sky, McIntosh took off a glove and ran her hand through her hair. “Telly in the commons, if you minded the rules,” she said. She put the glove back on and looked up. “I always did. I watched Dallas faithfully. It convinced me even a Borstal girl could do well in your country. I was right.”

  The steady breeze seemed to make Brenda more drunk. She tried twisting, but gave up. The cooler air made her think of volcanoes in the Philippines. Some doctor had said they might be why she had lived. She wondered if those same volcanoes had dropped the temperature in Michigan.

  “All right, the tub should be full.” McIntosh turned from the patio railing, moved inside and checked her watch. “I’ll drive back to the hotel and phone the Soubliks. They called, by the way. I’ll tell them you didn’t answer my calls, either. They’re on your machine. I made them with my cell phone while you were sleeping.” She stepped behind the chair and unlocked the wheels.

  You will have one chance—

  McIntosh now knelt in front, and began unknotting the nylons. She would have to free Brenda to pull her out. Pain knotted her back, keeping her conscious. She let McIntosh untie her wrists, but as she stood, Brenda snatched at her face. The headscarf came off.

  With both hands McIntosh grabbed for her wrists. “Damn you!”

  In that second Brenda grabbed McIntosh by the hair. Gripping it with both hands she pulled the woman down hard against her and threw them both backward. The chair rocked from the weight and toppled back, landing with a clang. Something broke—the vodka bottle. McIntosh was on her, struggling, fighting, holding her wrists—

  Then she was gone. Paralyzed from the back down, Brenda felt more than saw her pass through the room in a single movement, as though wind or magic had swept her out through the open sliding door. Not understanding, still taped at the mouth, she sucked for air, blinking through tears.

  Someone was snapping fingers.